'Why did eBay side with the buyer when he returned my Apple MacBook?' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jessica-investigates/did-ebay-side-buyer-returned-apple-macbook/ <comment><USER3> Ex eBay employee here. Don't buy or sell on eBay. It's not that no-one there cares, I certainly did, it is that no-one in power cares. The corporate culture is toxic. I worked in bad buyer experience and building algorithms to fix this is trivial. It happens a lot so there is a lot of data and the patterns are simple. The problem is that every fix costs eBay a discernible amount money.

We did customer analysis to show that existing customers were leaving faster than new ones were coming in. Usually people have one bad experience and never come back. They still didn't care and given their culture they will never care until their stock plummets or a real competitor comes along.

<comment><USER4> But they already have a real competitor: Amazon

<comment><USER3> Not yet and not really.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate a bit on that ? It seems from afar that both Amazon and Ebay are crashing into eachother.

Amazon, for it's side, is opening up to sellers. From secondhand sellers to etsy type products getting listed on Amazon. It's focus is different: getting many producers/middlemen to list the same products.

Ebay is working to get part of the logistics, payment, etc. in house. Ebay used to be just a listing site. But then payment came into ebay (with a hefty fee raise I might add), and now we see the focus on ebay to classify things the way Amazon does. You're seeing that when you sell something on ebay. Ebay will ask "is it like this ?" and then ask a few questions to determine the exact product.

Seems like both companies are evolving toward the same middle ground.

<comment><USER3> It's a big nuanced topic but I'll elaborate a bit more.

Amazon has bigger fish to fry than eBay. Amazon can always focus on second hand market place later while leveraging their infrastructure to ensure a win. My bet is that they will take a long time to get around to it. In the meantime phone based and social based have a pretty good shot at competing. This will also take a long time.

eBays efforts to take on Amazon at being Amazon is a total waste of what little focus they have. Like Yahoo, one of the best perks of eBay is that it's hard to get fired. It's very relaxed and people are quite comfortable - <USER2> risk an easy / safe job by taking a risk doing something innovative. After a while innovative people get jack of it and leave and all you're left is the lazy and incompetent. There are pockets of excellence within eBay but they're getting smaller. There was a potential for a turnaround when the stock price was $10 but at $30+ no-one is interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly, this is just how things are when you're a 3rd party seller on platforms like eBay, Amazon, etsy, etc.

They side with the buyers. Bad behavior, or fraud, on the part of buyers isn't interesting to them when the seller is a 3rd party because they have no skin in the game. They want that buyer more than they want you.

There's no escalation point either. Push back, and the fraudulent buyer will just file a chargeback. The credit card companies are even worse about siding with buyers engaging in return fraud.

For me, it's just the cost of doing business. I have to pad my margin to account for it. Assholes like the buyer depicted in the article just make prices higher for everyone else.

Edit: It might be interesting if some fairly ubiquitous payment processor offered a shared buyer blacklist. I suppose though, nobody wants to expose themselves to the potential lawsuits. If it were managed well, by only allowing fairly established, higher volume sellers, to add to the list, it might work well.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm... sounds like an interesting startup idea, curate a list of bad buyers and sell access to it based on a monthly subscription. The catch being that whoever curates the list would have to do a thorough job either vetting complaints or developing a statistical model that predicts if someone is a jerk at a higher rate than the average consumer. There are issues with this idea of course, it might be more expensive to run the service than sellers lose in revenue, you're liable to tick off both sellers and buyers by attempting to be an unbiased mediator. You could also land in hot water if a minority group ends up having higher than average rates of getting black listed.

<comment><USER6> I think it would almost have to be someone like Stripe or Paypal, such that they have a broad enough view into the buyer. They would get data via chargebacks versus just seller initiated data.

Personally, I think credit card companies should send back something like "percentage of purchases with a chargeback" and let us decide how risky we want to be.

<comment><USER7> You could also function as a broad returns resale company, front a portion of the money for the return fix/dump products in house and resell them at a discounted price. Then adjust the percentage you refund the seller based on what type of item it is and how much of there stuff comes back unsalvagable. Target resale at the developing world/people on shoestring budgets/startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone please build a better eBay? Something with stronger reputation signals, escrow based payment, and lower fees? I've had many bad experiences on eBay but there's nowhere better to buy/sell certain things.

I sold an old phone on eBay for $100. I choose PayPal as the payment and everything seemingly went fine. A few weeks later I wondered where my money was because I still didn't have it. The buyer had sent it but apparently I forgot to 'accept' it. eBay said I had waited too long and no longer had a right to get the money. So the buyer got my phone, eBay got the $100, and I had to pay $8 in seller fees. Sold a phone for negative $8. How is that not fraud?

<comment><USER5> Here's how one common scam works : the buyer sent you a fake payment mail. There was never a paypal transaction, nor was any money transfered. The money you paid to ebay was a listing fee, not a final value fee (yes you have to pay even if the item doesn't sell), but in reality the item was never sold.

This is like the old snail mail scam: insert extra bills for common things (like electricity or tax or whatnot) with fake payment instructions (ie. pointing to an account under your control). Suckers pay, then a month later receive another bill from the power company and complain, but of course the power company has no idea about any of that payment and will, of course, still insist on payment.

Make sure to go to paypal's site to verify paypal payments (and frankly if you can avoid it: don't use paypal). Check the sites YOU GO TO, not what ends up in your inbox.

<comment><USER8> Interesting scam but that was not it. eBay confirmed that the buyer had paid, I just was not eligible to get the money. What I paid was a final value fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried starting a business selling those 30 day WoW subscription cards as I came on to a box of them for fairly cheap. I sold most of them, then one person falsely reported me of fraud and that was it, my paypal account which had all of my profits in it was frozen and I never managed to recover the money. IIRC I had close to £300 and I never found out what happened to the money; I imagine paypal just took it as profit despite every buyer giving me positive feedback up until that point.

I was considering starting a marketplace on Amazon last year as well with a friend, just selling basic Chinese made goods but it sounds like things like this are rampant there too, and honestly I'm seeing a lot of sellers on Amazon lately that are scammers, so I'm beginning to lose faith in Amazon as a consumer as well.

If I'm going to try and make a business from selling goods online I would want to run my own ecommerce shop using shopify or something similar.

<comment><USER10> Check again. They should give you instructions on getting the money back after 180 days.

<comment><USER9> This was ten years ago; I might try and dig it up to see if I can get it back, but honestly by now I imagine all hope is lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dealing with finicky buyers - let alone fraudulent ones - is what drove me away from selling stuff online. The system is set up to cater to the oversensitive mindsets of entitled online shoppers, which is the same setup that gives fraudulent buyers an unassailable leg up over sellers.

My marketplace of choice is Craigslist. I meet up with the buyer, they inspect the item, and pay me in cash if all looks good. There is no room for monkey business. I usually set up these meetings in front of the closest police station in order to keep everyone safe. A few times buyers have come to the lobby of my office building. I've never had an unhappy buyer after having sold dozens of items over the last decade or so.

</comment><comment><USER12> Selling stuff on ebay / using paypal (they're the same thing from a seller's perspective) is a gamble. You can sell a brand new product and then the buyer creates a dispute with ebay/paypal and you're fucked. Often they don't even have to return the item. Paypal will freeze the funds. Only if the buyer agrees to cancel their complaint can you get your money back. It's too bad. Ebay used to be a wonderful platform. But like most Internet companies today, they are shit. Paypal's business is undoubtedly criminal. Craigslist works only because it's not a platform and you don't have to give them money. Much less exposure, but at least ebay/paypal/other shitty Internet company doesn't keep your money. All these advances, and a copy of the classifieds (craigslist) plus cash is still the optimal route for selling safely. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've sold one thing on eBay ever and I'll never do it again. My buyer tried to do the same thing mentioned in this article to me; luckily I made the item non returnable and I didn't let the buyer's threats of getting a lawyer scare me into giving in, I knew it would have to go through eBay's dispute system first. It's really a terrible system for sellers, it really sucks that eBay et al. are all guilty.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is not a new kind of story on eBay but I'm not sure what the answer is. The reputation system works to some degree if someone commits systematic fraud but if someone does this as a one-off thing, I'm not sure what reasonable protections are other than using some sort of escrow service.

You can argue whether eBay's policies should default to favoring the buyer or the seller but they pretty much have to do one or the other. Even if their customer service were better than it is, it's not in the position to do a forensic investigation in cases where the facts are in dispute and can't be easily determined.

<comment><USER12> No, one or two minutes spent by a human would easily resolve this situation and most disputes. Just taking a look at the images and serial numbers of the macs would provide the evidence needed. Ebay does not have to be the shitty company it is. It chooses to be the shitty company it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least part of this is on the seller for not keeping track of the serial number. Whenever you deal in used Apple products either as a buyer or a seller you should always check the serial number, always make sure you keep the original packaging, and always make sure the serial numbers on the unit and the packaging match. This is by far your best protection against all manner of shady dealings.

<comment><USER6> You say that as if it would have compelled eBay to decide the matter differently. It really doesn't work that way with eBay, Amazon, or similar. They just don't care about return fraud, especially when it's a 3rd party seller. The buyer can return a box of rocks and it works out the same way.

Edit: My classic example was one case where the buyer claimed "item not received". It was a one-off, custom item, and quite expensive. So, I was pissed off enough to hire a private investigator to go to the place of business. The item was there. The PI took pictures of the item, with the buyer's business (including signage) in the background. I submitted them in the counter dispute. I also had one of his employee's signature on a UPS delivery slip. Still lost. Their reasoning was that the signature was not the buyer's signature (no matter that it was the buyer's employee's signature). They didn't mention the incriminating pictures at all in the final outcome.

<comment><USER16> If it was expensive enough to hire a PI, seems like you could litigate civilly?

<comment><USER6> It was a $500 purchase. Buyer was out of state, 1000+ miles away. The PI charged $120 to take the pictures.

This was more of a principal thing. You can imagine these days I just shrug and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think there is a fundamental assymetry in buyers and sellers for eBay. A random buyer is much more likely to be a repeat user than a random seller. An individual might sell a few items, but would buy many more items. In addition, a bad experience as a seller where eBay took the buyer's side, is actually more likely to make them have confidence in being a buyer. On the other hand, a buyer that feels cheated is likely to never use the service again. As for businesses that sell on eBay, they assume a certain rate of these kind of things and price in the risk accordingly, so they don't really care as long as it is not too frequent. Given the above, it absolutely makes sense for eBay to be heavily biased in favor of the buyer in a dispute.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am not surprised. I used to sell old iPhones and MacBooks on eBay but stopped since every experience became bad in some way and the fees are already high and getting higher.

The last straw for me was a MacBook sale. I took great care of it and listed it in great condition and included pictures. The buyer considered it "good" not great condition and after several back and forths arguing I sent him $50 to buy a cover. I searched around for information and experiences from others during the process and eventually realized that he had all the control and eBay essentially always sides with buyers. I'm glad I only got taken for $50 instead of the outcome from the story. Never again though. F eBay

</comment><comment><USER19> I recently bought MacBook on eBay and it arrived with bended lid that was not mentioned in the description. Messaged the seller hoping that he could at least offer $50 compensation for that. Will see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER20> I buy and sell on eBay, but I only sell things on it that I'm OK with losing without compensation, which generally means small items of moderate value that I am trying to get rid of to declutter. Low-value items get donated or trashed. Free or high-value items are given away or sold for cash through Craigslist or other in-person means. This has worked out pretty well for me so far.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am scared to sell anymore on Ebay given these stories. How can you protect yourself if you are selling a high priced item?

<comment><USER22> You really can't. When dealing with high priced items, always ship with insurance and signature confirmation. It costs more but it's worth the trouble. I'd had cases where the seller claimed the box to be empty. I've had cases where they claimed it to be damaged. Whether they are lying or not I don't know, but that's where the shipping insurance covers it.

The cases that the seller does want a return, you really can't say no. I usually just say yes, I can process a return, but can you explain what is wrong with the item? Maybe we can walk through it before processing a full return. Usually you can get away with compensating them something since no one wants to go through the hassle of the return.

I also make sure I tell them to ship with signature confirmation and tracking. Since I offer "free shipping", that means they would have to eat all the costs when they return the item. More often than not, it's not worth the hassle for them.

After hundreds of sales, I would say there are definitely some complications, but more often than not it's fine. It's one of the risks you have to consider when selling.

<comment><USER23> I bought an item from Amazon recently and I actually did receive an empty box. Was nervous about reporting it as I was highly aware that it could easily look like I was running a scam and I had no way to prove otherwise. Fortunately Amazon gave me a refund. It seems that whatever policy you put in place for this situation, some people are going to get screwed at least some of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last time I sold on eBay I remember there being options to restrict who can bid. Like having users that had a good track record. Do they not do that anymore or have the scammers managed to mess that up even?

<comment><USER25> How does one get a good track record if they can't bid on anything?

<comment><USER24> Plenty of things you can buy with 0 history. Mainly from large sellers that can absorb the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've never sold anything on eBay/Amazon because of this. For used items I'd just try anything like Craiglist, Gumtree or alike.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why not put a tracking chip in the package and get the buyer's physical address?

Or sue the buyer in small claims?

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised there isn't seller-side insurance... eBay etc all have buyer side insurance.

</comment><comment><USER29> eBay always, always sides with buyers. If there has been a case of eBay successfully handling buyer fraud, I haven't heard about it. You just have to accept it as a cost of doing business.

<comment><USER24> Couple years ago I won as a seller. Item was delayed by usps and the buyer (rightfully) started the claims process. Usps delivered with a signature but the claim was never cancelled. Eventually eBay said they reviewed it and awarded in my favor. Granted this is a bit different than someone sending an empty box back, eBay does sometimes actually look into it.</comment></comment>


Netflix Sans, a new custom typeface - <AUTHOR> https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/netflix-sans-typeface-dalton-maag-graphic-design-210318 <comment><USER3> As a UI font, this is pretty great. Almost a mix between Circular and San Francisco, it should work well.

However, most disappointing and worrying part of font presentation is applications to different movies and TV shows. With the same typeface, they completely lose their identity.

Strong, condensed typeface of House of Cards. 80s-inspired typeface for Stranger Things. Minimal and geometric typeface for OA. Cyrillic alphabet inspired treatment of R in Icarus.

They all were different and appropriate, and here they are all very 2010's generic sans-serif, losing all personality.

I'm happy to see Netflix Sans in UI, but sure hope it doesn't go deeper, into actual show branding.

<comment><USER4> > As a UI font, this is pretty great.

I disagree. With high-resolution displays becoming the norm, I'm questioning why so much of the industry is still stuck on sans-serif fonts for UI, and worse, regressing from humanist sanses to neo-grotesk fonts, which are the worst (seriously, if you have to use a sans, use something like Myriad or Noto Sans... which Apple and Google used to use before they jumped on the neo- grotesk bandwagon).

The only reason to not use a serif font is because at low resolutions, the serifs blur into a mess, but low resolutions aren't an issue anymore. And on top of that, hinting is a thing. Serif fonts have objectively better readability, and subjectively they're much prettier than anything else.

I've been using Noto Serif as my main UI font on pretty much everything for a couple of years now, and it's absolutely perfect. I'll never go back to a sans for UI.

<comment><USER5> > With high-resolution displays becoming the norm

It will be years before TVs as well as desktop monitors are HiDPI in overwhelming numbers. 720p/1080p is pretty much the norm for those now. These fonts are meant to be usable on the vast majority (> 95%) of customer's screens, not just the minority (majority soon) of HiDPI screens.

> The only reason to not use a serif font is because at low resolutions, the > serifs blur into a mess, […]

Nonsense. It's also an aesthetic call. We are not just using sans-serif fonts because our screens can't do better; sometimes they just work on their own merits (whether that's legibility or appearance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This announcement is interesting but it's unfortunate that the visual balance in the first rendered image is troubled.

In particular, the uppercase "N", the lowercase "e", and the lowercase "t" do not harmonize. The kerning between the "N" and the "e" needs tweaking.

This imbalance is especially noticeable because the balance between the characters "tflix" is magnificent, a small textual portrait practically worth framing on its own.

<comment><USER7> I felt like this too. I'm also confused by the "subtle cinemascopic curve" at the top of the "t" which doesn't appear to be replicated anywhere else in the font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, it's much more successful a design department indulgence than [https://dropbox.design](https://dropbox.design)

It looks pretty good. But both initiatives are retro throwback Design Affectations — "Our Own Helvetica!" — and, for my tastes, it is a little bit twee to apply it over the whole interface. A better executed PT Cruiser is still a PT Cruiser.

It feels like a corporate design macro fashion trend, like ultrathin weight fonts were a few years ago, or square composition photos and enforced circular cropped avatars.

<comment><USER9> That page just hurt my eyes...

<comment><USER10> Really? I actually liked it. It doesn't look like most of tech redesgins, reminds me of American Ads from the 60's. I like how they do thing differently.

<comment><USER11> As a design person, I think it's pretty terrible. But it is also terrible with such conviction that you can't help but wonder, "hrm, I suppose this is good?"

With that said though, even though that particular page looks terrible, I think properly implemented page can look pretty compelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > With the global nature of Netflix's business, font licensing can get quite > expensive

Interesting that they'd say "global" when the font shown is just basic English -- no accents, circumflexes, etc.

I'll be really interested if they make their own CJK font as well -- that's a tremendous undertaking.

<comment><USER13> A lot of licenses are negotiated based on viewership and market size. I'd imagine that they computed cost-benefit and determined that doing basic English letters was sufficient to cut their licensing costs. iQiyi would probably benefit from a custom CJK font, depending on how those licenses work in Asia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > creating a bespoke font was driven by escalating costs

> With the global nature of Netflix's business, font licensing can get quite > expensive

How does it work? I thought commercial fonts were a one-time purchase, is it different for businesses like Netflix?

<comment><USER15> Yes. Most commercial fonts are actually not a one time purchase, but are instead licensed over a period of time. The licensing agreement usually stipulates how many time they may serve that font from their services - <USER2> more time it is served, the more $$$ it costs

<comment><USER4> In that case, why not use an open-source font like Noto? No licensing fees and no need to spend money hiring a type designer.

<comment><USER14> I guess for branding. Now they have their own font associated with their service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't appear to be open source. Too bad.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I'm not sure how that's a newsworthy thing here then. A company got a new font, that's it. Maybe as a little curio about licensing fees being so bad, sure, but otherwise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not a fan of sans serif fonts that make it hard to tell the difference between I and l.

<comment><USER19> In the context that netflix wants to use these fonts, how is this a problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any visual comparisons available between this font and their previous primary font they were using? Or Helvetica which it seems very similar to?

</comment><comment><USER21> I, too, like the Neue Haas Grotesk variant of Helvetica. But I can't get too excited about another teeny tweak to it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does Netflix's existing wordmark use Netflix Sans (retroactively)? Will the wordmark be updated?

It wasn't clear in the article. It said "the arched cut on the lowercase "t" is apparently inspired by the "cinemascopic curve" of the brand's wordmark". "Inspired by" suggests it is not an exact match.

<comment><USER23> The font doesn't really look anything like the wordmark (unless there's a condensed version?) so I'd assume they're separate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The blurb about saving on font licensing costs, reminds me about RLM's apocryphal quip about George Lucas saving money on printer ink by change "Revenge of the Jedi" to "Return of the Jedi"

</comment><comment><USER25> _as foundries move towards impression-based licensing for their typefaces in many digital advertising spaces_

That's a fancy way of saying "as foundries price themselves out of business"

</comment><comment> d--b First thought: looks like the nutella typeface mixed with helvetica.

</comment><comment><USER26> With all the Sans typefaces that exist, it must resembles at least one of them. What would happen with the similarities in terms of rights?

</comment><comment><USER27> Where to download? :D

<comment><USER28> keep an eye out for vk.com, many free fonts there

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Because none of the 858 open source, free for commercial use Google Fonts were a good fit? Such an excess.

<comment><USER30> Or the FLOSS alternative Google created to specifically solve the whole "International Audience" problem. [0]

The slight curve on the lower-t of Netflix Sans actually bothers me because it's the only curve of its kind. The "straight exit strokes" and "flat horizontal terminals" makes it inconsistent. Why not use that curve for the starting verticals of the lower-b, lower-d, or lower-h? [1]

[0] [https://www.google.com/get/noto/](https://www.google.com/get/noto/)

[1] [https://vgy.me/kJ2plQ.png](https://vgy.me/kJ2plQ.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Like the world needs yet another Sans typeface.

The only objective measure of the value of a typeface for reading comprehension showed that serif faces are overwhelmingly better. The only thing favoring sans-serif faces is fashionability among graphic designers. Making new ones does nothing for anyone except the designer.

<comment><USER32> Seems like most of the research on that is inconclusive. There's not much evidence one is much more readable than the other.

[http://alexpoole.info/blog/fighting-bad-typography- research/](http://alexpoole.info/blog/fighting-bad-typography-research/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibili...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibility)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I fret my GitHub activity when job hunting? - <AUTHOR> I've recently started preparing for a job change. Part of my preparation is reading books on interviewing, brushing up on data structures/algorithms etc. I think these are a must-do for any developer that starts looking for a new job.
However, I'm also torn about what _else_ to do. I've been working on a commercial project on the side that hasn't shipped yet. I think it would be great if I could ship it prior to interviewing (would look good and give me something to show/talk about that is professional and polished besides my day job).
I've also got personal projects on GitHub that span the last year give or take a few small pockets of inactivity. All in all, this is a lot of stuff to take on at one time while also maintaining my current job and responsibilities.
In other words, I've got to choose one or two things to focus on (books/practicing problems, commercial project that hasn't shipped yet, or public GitHub projects).
My assumption is I should focus on reading and brushing up while working on my side project even though it's not publicly visible.
The question is, should I worry if I stop my public GitHub activity for 2-3 months while I prepare and (potentially) finish a commercial project? It will be quite a hole in activity, and with all the 'GitHub as a resume' hype, it worries me.
I'm most likely worrying unnecessarily about all of this and I'm probably placing too much importance on GitHub activity (and Stackoverflow karma for that matter...). <comment><USER2> I think you're over thinking things. Tech hiring is so random that you could have the most impressive list of projects on github, but if you get asked a single data structure question that you stumble on they might pass. Similarly, you could ace the white boarding questions, but if they check out a project of yours on github that they don't enjoy for some reason they might pass.

I would stick to doing whatever will give you the most confidence when talking to companies. If that is studying data structures/algorithms then keep doing that. If its launching a side project focus on that instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback-- that's what my hunch was. I agree completely. I think hiring _is_ quite random and that is partially what puts me on edge. I want to prepare and give myself the upper hand but it's so random it's hard to prepare for.

I do think data structures and algorithms are a must and if I had to guess, stumbling on the whiteboard is probably the most common reason for a rejection which is why I think that is something that needs to be practiced.

The other things may just be gravy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "the 'GitHub as a resume' hype, it worries me."

You shouldn't. If you have a github account with a couple repos that are not forks you're good.

Also, I don't think reading books on interviewing and solving interview problems is a good preparation. If the company doesn't focus on what you have done (like your own projects, which sound great) and instead gives you stupid interview problems on the whiteboard, run away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks--

In my experience most companies are the 'stupid' problems, I certainly wish more companies would stop all the bad habits but it's pretty wide spread :(

<comment><USER3> It's up to us to do our part and refuse to dance like puppets :)

There are plenty of great companies who are trying hard to improve the hiring process and move away from the whiteboard exercises and brain-teasers.

I systematically refuse to interview with people who ask me how many tennis balls would be required to fill up the empire state building.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Part of my preparation is reading books on interviewing...

Beyond interview prep, consider that your job search is similar to a sales process. A couple of books worth reading as you think through your approach to the market...

Gitomer's Little Red Book > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75890.Little_Red_Book_of_...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75890.Little_Red_Book_of_Selling)

Perry's Guerilla Job Search> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9746430-guerrilla- marketi...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9746430-guerrilla-marketing- for-job-hunters-3-0)

<comment><AUTHOR> These are now on my book list, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Work on the commercial project. Even if it hasn't shipped, it is something worth talking about. What features did you implement, what were the challenges you faced along the way, what would you do differently next time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It's a commercial SaaS product and it's feature complete (server written in Go). The client workflow is complete as well. I am in the last "10%" which is all styling, polish and making the experience feel great. This part takes a long time (at least for me).

I'd love to steer my interviews down this question line, it makes a lot more sense than, "Regurgitate how to perform a binary search", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't believe the hype. A good resume, some confidence, and practice is all you need. Remember: You are not looking for everybody to hire you. Just one place. It doesn't matter if you 9 turn you down if #10 hires you. :)

Best of luck!

PS. If you need an test interview email me. I'll try and help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I may take you up on that offer :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think you're thinking too much about this, with all the things to worry about, your github profile should be far down on the priority list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Outline: secure access to the open web - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.googleblog.com/2018/10/outline-secure-access-to-open-web.html <comment><USER2> Title: Alphabet's Jigsaw releases Outline, an open source platform that lets anyone create and operate their own VPN; it uses Shadowsocks protocol to avoid detection

Alos: Why is google pushing Digital Ocean over Google Cloud.</comment>


The First Lecture - <AUTHOR> http://blog.punchthrough.com/post/30067893806/first-lecture

<comment><USER2> Argghh, please do not decry the state of general education when you can't spell. I _know_ this is a nitpick, but phrases like "I've had the good fortunate" do not help your cause.

<comment><USER3> Really? His typo invalidates his premise about how to teach engineering in a fun and engaging way?

As far as I could tell, his main concern was for the curiosity and motivation of the students, not their ability to communicate via the written word.

Typos may detract from his post, and nitpicking is fine, but your first sentence is illogical, incorrect (it's not a spelling error), and unnecessarily negative. Take it easy with the attitude, man.

<comment><USER2> Of course the typo is logically irrelevant, and yes, I should have referred to diction rather than spelling.

But I don't think my point is illogical at all. Statements like "College is broken" (the original submission title) are counterintuitive (outside of HN, anyway) enough that they strain credibility. Sloppiness strains it further.

You're right on the unnecessary negativity. It would have been more helpful to note specific typos in a friendly manner. What was posted, however, was just my knee-jerk reaction upon opening the link. That said, though it doesn't serve as a good excuse, I doubt I'm the only one who might react as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool...I had no idea people didn't like microcontroller classes. At my school, "Principles of Engineering" (microcontrollers + mechE) is almost universally loved and a whole lot of fun.

<http://www.olinprojects.com/tag/principles-of-engineering/>

It seems that we learn in class a lot like how you originally did. Agreed that it is way better and more fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard a lot of good things about Olin and have always been impressed by it's grads. Seems like they are doing it right. I get the impression it's still a smaller school, is that true?

<comment><USER5> Half our founding team is from olin, they came out of college waaaaay more prepared for a startup than I did out of a UC. They are doing it right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great, while I've often _thought_ I should go back to my college and bridge the glaring holes between the curriculum and reality, I never got much further than that.

Definitely alumni going back and helping their schools should be encouraged, and hopefully most dept's are humble enough to accept that help. But I worry it's a small thing that doesn't scale, have you thought about the growing online education movement as a vector?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. This is kind of the test of my hypothesis, that doing these projects in the real world create a motivation that influences your school work, life, career, etc.

I've long thought that there should be a 'maker scholarship', giving small amounts of funding to people/students building real things. I found small amounts of this in the form of sponsorships from companies, but I really had to hustle for it. Whereas I randomly (literally just showed up in my mail) received a scholarship simply because my grades were above a certain mark. The 'Maker Scholarship' idea is definitely scalable.

As far as a new kind of school, I'm not sure the best way to do that. Certainly interested in all the online activity but I do like the social feel of a 'real life' school.

<comment><USER5> Maybe there is some concept you can develop at one school that can spread to more. I'd also bet maker companies like sparkfun would be interested in sponsoring such things.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Make a Clock Run for 10,000 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/10000-year-clock/all/1 <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2691452> contains discussion of that clock from a few months ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the dream of building things to last. If humans left earth this instant, what would remain useful in 1000 years? Most of what we use today would perish, so there is a sense of overwhelming disposability or high- maintenance around our lifestyles.

Rather than viewing this disposability as a weakness, perhaps we can see it as an element of wise design. By analogy, the human body leans heavily towards self-repair rather than monolithic permanence. Perhaps it is a good thing that our day-to-day designs depend so much on active use and maintenance. If no one continues to use it, why does it need to keep working?

<comment><USER4> This only works if design is whole-lifecycle design - if the cheap disposable crap we produce (and rely on, and luxuriate in) can be taken apart and reused after. If cheap fashion predominates, with clothes that fall apart after a season, you need a plan for disposing of those clothes more urgently than you need a plan for disposing of clothes that last a decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, I admit I didn't last all through this article, but there was a mention of titanium. I assume rare metals are needed to build a mechanism that is durable enough to last 10.000 years. But how are they going to deal with the fact that rare metals are also very desirable? I can guarantee that it won't take 10.000 years for someone to steal it and repurpose it.

<comment><USER6> The clock is mostly stainless steel, and it will live in a cave in a rather remote location. If civilization collapses in the future, there will be much easier things to steal.

If they really wanted to prevent theft, the builders could alloy the metals with something poisonous or radioactive. But that's harder than it sounds. Not much stuff stays dangerous for 10,000 years. If I were in charge, I'd build some cool Indiana Jones-esque traps. :)

<comment><USER7> > If they really wanted to prevent theft, the builders could alloy the metals > with something poisonous or radioactive. But that's harder than it sounds.

I'd also point out that such a technique would run opposite Long Now's goal of having visitors - I mean, it's hard to build a clock that lasts 10k years, hard to contain radioactive materials in casks buried underground in salt flats for 10k years, how much harder would it be to do both simultaneously?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure I like that the article opens by giving most of the credit to Jeff Bezos, "Billionaire Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has a long-term plan...". Yes, he is footing the bill for the Clock, but its hardly his.

Danny Hillis's concept and planning and the Long Now Foundation all preceed Bezos's involvement.

It would be much more genuine to attribute Jeff Bezos as the sponsor of the clock, but not as if it was entirely his idea.

<comment><USER9> It sounds like Jeff and Danny have known each other for a couple decades, and have been working actively together on the clock for at least 5 years. It also sounds like Jeff may have had significant involvement in helping to put the team together and actually make it happen, and he's philosophically invested in its purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While this article seems solid, I think it might push the gee whiz engineering aspects of the project (of which there are many very impressive ones) too much.

Bruce Sterling has a wonderful critique of the clock project and suggestions on how to impart it with some sort of higher level cultural permanency.

[http://blog.longnow.org/2008/08/03/bruce-sterlings-sharp- war...](http://blog.longnow.org/2008/08/03/bruce-sterlings-sharp- warning-8-years-later/)

What is really heartening to me is that much of the clock design seems to have taken this into account: the constantly change chime sequence, the difficult to access location, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish there were more technical details - the engineering behind building something designed to last 10k years would make for a great article.

<comment><USER7> The real cleverness seems to be in Hillis's mechanical digital logic for time- keeping; I looked up the patents once to look at the diagrams, and realized I had no idea what I was looking at. (Still looked pretty cool, though.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neal Stephenson's novel, "Anathem", was partly inspired by this clock.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would add, for you silicon valley/SF residents, that longnow.org puts on monthly lectures (<http://longnow.org/seminars/>), some of which are very interesting. E.g. the next speaker is Timothy Ferriss.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a giant waste of money.

</comment><comment><USER15> In 10k years, in the year 12011. the human race is going to be extinct one way or the other, either we all kill each other over resources or we advance way beyond biological and physical barriers, I hope someone finds this clock and thinks, how quaint.

Though it will probably just be a novelty, as we would stumble upon a hole in the ground some animal left in the jungle. The animal thinks it's a genius, we shrug and say eh, I could make that in 5 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER16> They should make it count down to the Amazon Clock Apocalypse in 12012.

<comment><USER17> That will be the story in the year 4000: ancient Americans believed the world would end in 12012.</comment></comment>


Tyson Foods takes out full-page ad: "The Supply Chain is Breaking" - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/494772-tyson-foods-takes-out-full-page-ad-the-food-supply-chain-is-breaking <comment><USER2> By all accounts, they made employees go back to work with inadequate safeguards. This is a some real chutzpah. Read [https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/us/tyson-waterloo-iowa- plant-...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/us/tyson-waterloo-iowa-plant- employees-coronavirus/index.html) for background (or [https://www.propublica.org/article/what-happens-if- workers-c...](https://www.propublica.org/article/what-happens-if-workers- cutting-up-the-nations-meat-get-sick) a little further back)

<comment><USER3> > Tyson also implemented a system several weeks ago to check the temperatures > of all employees entering the Waterloo facility, using infrared technology > to scan their faces as they arrive to work.

> Tyson said it installed plastic or plexiglass dividers along the cafeteria > tables where employees eat lunch. Two employees said the cafeteria dividers > probably helped to an extent, but they stressed that the cafeteria is always > very crowded.

>The production line worker said the company provided bandanas at one point, but she said her colleagues who utilized them complained they were cheaply made and started fraying right away.

It sounds like they were trying to do _something_ , but it's just really hard to keep ahead of this thing. I think food work is just fundamentally less safe right now.

<comment><USER4> They were willing to do some things so long as they didn't slow production. But when their work force starts decreasing, they start losing options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think this will lead to starvation. Meat will get more expensive this summer, but we shouldn't be eating as much meat as we do anyway. (To say nothing of the cruelty of our methods.)

If this worries you plant a Victory Garden now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden)

And buy some chickens.

<comment><USER6> If meat gets more expensive, people buy more vegetables instead. If people buy more vegetables, vegetables get more expensive. Plenty of people in America already go hungry. In a crisis with increased unemployement and decreased food production, more people will go hungry. It's not a famine (in the US), but it's a serious problem. How many studies have suggested that just giving kids breakfast would be the number one thing to improve school performance?

<comment><USER7> Recent news reports were of farmers throwing away produce because demand dropped from all the restaurants closing down. I think we'll be ok.

<comment><USER6> I hadn't heard about that. Googling it suggests most of this is due to supply chain problems preventing farmers who normally sell to restaurants being unable to sell to grocery stores; and labor not being available to pick food

[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=farmers+throwing+away+produ...](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=farmers+throwing+away+produce&atb=v198-1&ia=news&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2F2020%2F04%2F20%2Fcalifornia- farmers-are-forced-to-let-crops-rot-and-throw-away-milk-while-food-bank- demand-soars%2F)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The actual ad: [https://context- cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do...](https://context- cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/85d81e35-f0f2-48bb- bd58-c0a133b0d8c0/note/d104a57a-0aae-4420-aa28-8bb41c99593a.#page=1)

<comment><USER9> >Tyson Foods is also paying approximately $60 million in "thank you" bonuses to 116,000 frontline workers and Tyson truckers

That's around $500 per person. Is this monthly or yearly? If it's yearly it's a negligible amount of money.

<comment><USER10> $500 is not a trivial amount of money for millions of Americans.

<comment> compiler-guy Especially not to those who are working in meat processing plants. Is it enough? Probably not, but if you are working minimum wage with no benefits, $500 makes a real difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If they want to tell Congress or someone that the supply chain is breaking, that's fine. But why a full-page ad? "To inform the public"? Or to panic the public into pressuring the government? If so, pressure them to do what?

What's the motive for a full-page ad? Is it just "Don't blame us, we're doing all we can?" I don't know, but this seems unnecessarily alarmist for a PR exercise.

<comment><USER12> It also pretty much ensures a wave of panic buying.

<comment><USER13> Which I suppose is what you would want to happen if you are forced to slaughter millions of animals and are left with a parishable inventory.

<comment><USER14> I thought they were slaughtering animals without benefit because they lacked the labor to slaughter them for retail sale. Iff that's the case, panic buying helps them not at all and maybe makes the PR side of things even worse.

<comment><USER15> Panic buying also fails to help them if they basically can't raise prices to take advantage of it. It's not like panic buying is going to line their pockets, and certainly nowhere near enough to compensate for the damages they seem to be suffering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand the point of this ad. I thought food production was considered essential work. How is Tyson Foods affected by the stay-at-home orders?

<comment><USER17> My understanding is that they closed plants of their own volition because so many people were getting sick.

What the government can do is (1) find and prioritize personal protective equipment for food processing and (2) do a better job on enabling mass testing, again prioritizing the food supply chain.

Lobbying the government is more powerful when backed up with the popular pressure that will come from this ad and associated media coverage.

It's a relatively generous interpretation, and I'm not commenting on the wisdom of it or what it seeks to induce, but it seems plausible to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thomas Massie had been sounding the alarm for a while now about agriculture.

[https://twitter.com/repthomasmassie/status/12547777465274204...](https://twitter.com/repthomasmassie/status/1254777746527420417)

</comment><comment><USER19> Where are consequences for management? Food supply is a matter of national security.

Where is discussion about workplace safety and sick leave? The coronaplague keeps spreading because employees cannot afford to take time off.

<comment><USER20> Our national security is already compromised at the Commander-In-Chief level, this will probably go ignored until it is out of control much like the pandemic itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Since I discovered oat milk, I rarely buy cream for my coffee. It steams and tastes good enough. This may push people to eat more plant based food. Which is not bad really. Things I wish there was a vegan alternative for eggs, and cheese, with somewhat reasonable price/ease of use.

<comment><USER22> If we shutter all meat production today, then we won't be able to scale production of plant-based alternatives before the meat in the supply chain runs out. This means the costs go up and the poor starve. Everything is interconnected; we shouldn't be so cavalier about condemning entire industries. Although I would suggest we shouldn't be so callous about sacrificing an entire industry (i.e., the families who are supported by work in that industry) even if that industry were magically insulated from the rest of the economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> time to order some cornish cross chicks

</comment><comment><USER24> "Depopulated" is quite the euphemism.

<comment><USER25> I am a meat eater and huntsman, and I agree. Just say 'euthanised' or 'thrown away' or 'killed and wasted.' Treat readers like adults, not use euphemisms.

For that matter, it wouldn't surprise me were there a traditional term to use. 'Cull,' maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> link without auto play video

[https://outline.com/qF7tdw](https://outline.com/qF7tdw)

</comment><comment><USER27> Tyson chicken is garbage anyway. My meat suppliers have expressed that things are tough right now, but far from "breaking". I wouldn't be too upset if Tyson foods died.

</comment><comment><USER28> Whatever damage a virus may rage, it will not be greater than maintaining the restrictions and preventing people from going to work.

Let businesses set their policies, employees choose their desired level of safety. Let us choose our destinies instead of confining us to quarters.</comment>


Henry Blodget on how to value Groupon - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/is-groupon-stock-overvalued-2011

<comment><AUTHOR> No matter your opinion on Groupon, I feel this is an excellent article/insight on how a "pro" values a stock.</comment>


What Happens Inside a 100-hop IPv6 Wireless Mesh Network? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thingsquare.com/blog/articles/100-hops-ipv6-mesh/ <comment><USER2> It seems as though we are getting closer and closer to having feasible rooftop mesh networks, where one house gets a fiber drop, and splits the bandwitdth with N neighbors.

I'd love to know what a feasible value is for N, assuming 10's of MBit average throughput per house (so a few 4K netflix streams at night, once that's a common thing), and sub 100ms RTTs (absymal, because this is for early adopters anyway).

[edit: put another way, what's the upper bound where this stops working as a broadband solution?]

<comment><USER3> We have this, basically.

There are several wireless internet providers available in my area (e.g. Vivint Wireless). One person has fiber and rooftop dishes relay it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be interesting to know about things like latency, packet loss, maximum throughput etc (and how these properties change over larger distances).

Also, how in an "in the wild" setup works with 802.15.4e, especially with moving nodes -- how would routing table normally be determined? Signal strength alone, or is it possible to discover how central a neighboring node is to the network and use that to inform the choice too? Really interesting subject.

<comment><USER5> Moving nodes are summarized under the term mobility, and in RPL it is usually handled by reconstruction from the top or re-discovery of parents by the node itself. Timers play an important role, and mobility is a known weak spot of RPL.

The choice of preferred parent is governed by the objective function OF, which could be anything, but usually is the rank of the node (relative to the DODAG root).

If you are really interested, RPL is an open IETF internet standard, so are the underlying protocols and principles. Down the rabbit hole it is.

<comment><USER6> Fredrik, Thingsquare CTO here.

We have a bit more detailed information about how we use mesh and RPL here: [http://www.thingsquare.com/docs/mesh/](http://www.thingsquare.com/docs/mesh/)

Regarding mobility, we're using a number of tricks and custom solutions to discover and quickly join new networks/parents - in vanilla RPL networks it sometimes takes a long time to drop a bad or distant parent, causing long delays for mobile devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> an interesting description of a few screenshots, but omits all details unfortunately.

<comment><USER8> I agree, it was interesting but lacking. This seemed to be more about how many hops it could go through and the tools they use to test it. The hard part of mesh is finding a good path but this removed that whole piece.

<comment><USER6> Fredrik, Thingsquare CTO here. Glad to see an interest in this article, and happy to prepare more detailed information about how the system works and performs. There's of course tons of information that we're happy to discuss :)

Anything else in particular that you would like to know more about?

<comment><USER9> Thanks for stopping by to comment, I have a good bit of respect for C-level executives that take the time and risk to comment in public forums.

Let me color the remainder of my comment by saying that my experience is in the 802.11/Wifi land and may not directly apply to the systems Thinksquare uses.

I have been working in (802.11) wireless for ~20 years and have seen pretty much every implementation of mesh fail spectacularly. One implementation I got to see fail up close was Kissimmee/St-Cloud's Tropos system.

Some of the largest obstacles were outlined in the linked page -- how to figure out what's going on. It seems Thingsquare is not forming the mesh on the 802.11 networks, but on a separate low power network. Not sure all of the intimate details of this 802.15.4e setup but I imagine it has some of the issues of 802.11

One big problem on 802.11 networks is that each radio is half duplex, and once you get 2-3 hops out, speed an latency are severely impacted. The variability in latency caused by retransmits in a noisy environment wreaks havoc on TCP window scaling.

I've always heard about this self-healing, route-around-problem-areas magic, but have never seen it work well in practice. You generally don't know if a link is bad until you try to use it, particularly if you aren't actively testing the links in order to reduce your power consumption. But then actively testing the links can itself generate interference with other links.

Some of these have been "solved" by using devices with dual radios, one for the 'mesh' network and one for user access. Maybe someone finally has some magic that works, but I've seen many municipalities and corporations promised the moon, spent millions on networks that then fall flat on their face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It feels like this should be the first part in a series.

</comment><comment><USER11> What is the discovery process for these things like? What I mean is: if I buy 100 of them, put them in a room and turn them on, how do they work together to organize IP addresses?

Humans normally do this by "hi, I'm John" and "hi John, I'm Bob."

Do these things broadcast a MAC address set at the factory?

I ask because I think that when mesh networks become really interesting me is when they are entirely decentralised, as in finding a way for these things to have a universally unique MAC the second they turn on for the first time without some sort of authoritative server.

<comment><AUTHOR> Each device does have a unique MAC address. But the protocols are designed to work even if that MAC address happens to not be unique. The IPv6 address assignment procedure first attempts to claim an IPv6-address based on its MAC address, but before finally assigning the address, the device will test if the address is already taken. If another device in the same network happens to have the same MAC address, that device will have claimed the same IPv6 address already and that device will defend its address. The new device will then choose a new IPv6 address to avoid collisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If one wanted to go about simulating one of these in a homelab what sort of hardware would your recommend that is price accessible? even if a smaller mesh like 20-30 nodes.

<comment><USER13> 10 years ago I built a streetlight system, we implemented and tested the protocol by build a simple simulator in a qt app and embedding the same software stack inside it, it allowed us to create models that modelled x/y locations, distance signal drop off, random noise, exit points etc

Large randomly placed simulations only started to slow with ~15k nodes ... In other words it's not hard

<comment><USER14> awesome. it's probably not a reasonable request but if any of this was open sourced it would be a great asset to humanity!

<comment><USER13> Probably not that useful in that it was an old QT, no longer compiles.

More importantly I have a tiny OS that doesn't have real threads (code had to run on 8k), I port it all over it simply consists of a timer queue, and one stack - threadlets are a queue entry with a data pointer - running 14k instances of this tiny OS in one simulator is pretty easy (you still just have one timer queue ....) - so you can see it's all pretty dependant on the uOS

The only hard part is making packet delivery not O(N __2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm very excited to see mesh networks become a thing; there's a lot of potential there to replace ISPs someday. Gonna be a long time of course — a 100-node network is nothing like The Internet write large, but it's still good to see progress.

Little funny that streetlights have a network, but I guess it makes finding & fixing faults easier.

I really love that this used animated images instead of JavaScript — works with any browser that way.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd be concerned if the data from the 100 wlan nodes in very close proximity becomes too skewed from real world implementations. And whether that skewed data is valid enough to build a simulation around.

<comment><AUTHOR> (Adam, Thingsquare CEO here)

Yes, the 100 nodes in close proximity is quite a bit different from 100 nodes spread out across a larger geographical area. Even if we can play tricks with routing tables to make the testbed act more like a real deployment, there is much more congestion in the testbed because all can hear each other. Also, there are many wireless effects in play in a real-world situation, such as the capture effect, that has several implications for how the distribution and routing protocols operate.

By default, the simulation does not try to replicate the testbed setup, but rather the real-world deployments. But we can tweak the simulation to behave more like the testbed if we want to inspect behavior we see in the testbed that we don't see in real-world deployments.

(As it happens, this was pretty much the topic of the PhD thesis of Thingsquare CTO Fredrik a few years back: [http://uu.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:447343/FULLTEXT01....](http://uu.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:447343/FULLTEXT01.pdf))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> is there a hard limit to amount of nodes? What is the routing protocol?

<comment><AUTHOR> (Adam, Thingsquare CEO here)

The routing protocol is called RPL (pronounced "ripple") and is designed to create a directed acyclic graph to route IPv6 packets in networks where the nodes are severely memory-constrained. It is defined by RFC6550. There is more information in [http://www.thingsquare.com/docs/mesh/](http://www.thingsquare.com/docs/mesh/) and [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550)

There is no hard limit to the number of nodes in a RPL network. The protocol is defined so that every node can reach the root of the network, but requires additional work to reach nodes inside the network. The mode of operation that we are using in the Thingsquare system is called storing mode and requires all nodes on a path between two nodes to maintain information about the route. This does not scale to large number of nodes. But this is needed only when setting up a TLS connection, to exchange security secrets, which is normally only done once per node. When the TLS connection goes down, the route is torn down, which allows for another route to take its place.</comment></comment>


Why Innovation Won't Save Us - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578191781756437940.html

<comment><USER2> This is an ancient trolling argument against the ingenuity of humanity.

Every few decades since the beginning of time, someone out there has proclaimed, "Everything has been invented, every idea has been thought, and it's only diminishing returns from here on out. The best days are past us". Except this time it happens to be a WSJ op-ed. How many WSJ op-eds have been written in the past hundred years, predicting the same thing?

It so easily dismisses driverless cars and 3d printing and hypersonic transportation. OK, these are hard problems. Sure, humanity may have given up on "big ideas" for the last few decades while the internet was born (Neal Stephenson's big complaint)

But to say that the best days are past, and that innovation can't bring us to a place that nobody imagined before? Come on. This is just silly.

Or put it another way, we could use the oft-disparaged Donald Rumsfeld quote that actually does make a lot of sense: "We don't know what we don't know".</comment>


East Coast and Texas metros had the most H-1B visas from 2010 to 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/29/h-1b-visa-approvals-by-us-metro-area/ <comment><USER2> The H1B situation in TX is out of control. Most positions are for cheap labor. There are whole departments at many large Corps that are well over 50% Indian. Indians are set to become the largest Immigrant population in TX replacing Mexicans.

Shame companies don't want to higher Americans anymore.

<comment><USER3> _> Shame companies don't want to higher Americans anymore._

Maybe the jobs require better spelling than the American schools provide?</comment></comment>


Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080410/sc_livescience/whybeautifulwomenmarrylessattractivemen;_ylt=Ai6I3iUl8T7NM4lI499n0h8DW7oF <comment><USER2> Simple answer: money

it is interesting that article mentions height and money because while back i read another study that figured out how much money a man should make to compensate for a situation where the man is shorter than the woman. apparently there was an almost a linear correlation, for every inch of extra height that a woman has on a man, the man must have at least an extra 6 million of net worth.

<comment><USER3> Money isn't everything. Silicon Valley is filled with thousands of ugly rich dudes who can't find a date.

<comment><USER4> I'd say that SV is a sausage fest, but if these guys are rich, and mobile, than what prevents them to move to a place where they would have much better ods at finding good looking and smart women? If you have money, NYC is a blast. Maybe they can work a pet project from there.

I'd say, if you have more than 3-4 millions on your bank account, you are really well off, and the only thing that prevents from finding a woman, is your character, or lack of trying.

Bad looks, can be fixed with some good fashion, exercise, and maybe some litle surgery.

<comment><USER5> True, but the cash is largely irrelevant. You could have 3-4 cents but if you have character and willpower you can find someone.

In fact, I would hypothesize that the kind of women who care whether you have $3-4 million are not the kind who care so much about character in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This title is misleading. In fact the text of the article contradicts the title:

"About a third of the couples had a more attractive wife, a third a more attractive husband and the remaining partners showed matching looks."

Regardless, the article is stretching pretty far to make its conclusions. The study just showed couples where the woman is more attractive than the man were happier. That doesn't mean women should "marry down". It could just mean that men care more about looks, and therefore an attractive woman contributed more to the couple's happiness than an attractive man.

<comment><USER7> If that were the case, then the happiness of the couple would be independent of the attractiveness of the man, or at least have little correlation.

Anyways, it's probably because the match hits an equilibrium. Men are statistically much more likely to commit adultery than women (22%:14%).

[http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id...](http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=226300)

A difference in attractiveness in the woman's favor means there is much less incentive for the man to cheat, since a woman more attractive than his wife is unlikely to try and seduce him. Consequently, it isn't worth the risk for the man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> These kinds of studies are ridiculous.

First there's the element of subjectivity and discretion in the "trained coders" that rate a person's attractiveness. On a single overall number scale no less.

But more importantly, how do they even hope to attain any semblance of ceteris paribus ("all things being equal") in this study? Of the millions of factors that contribute to pair selection and how couples interact, the researchers want to isolate disparities in attractiveness and test whether this is significant. Short of cloning a whole bunch of people and pairing them up with ugly and beautiful partners, AND THEN doing the tests, the sheer number of conflating variables makes this kind of research worthless. I don't think even the clones would make the results valid given the variables that aren't genetic eg. upbringing, mood on the day, individual preference etc.

It comes accross as if they came up with the conclusion first, and then fit a flimsy experiment to prove the point. The correlations are no doubt statistically significant, but to imply that they mean anything without even attempting to isolate any other conflicting factors is a joke.

Human interaction is a complex system. There's every possibility that attractiveness does contribute to pair selection as the researchers assert, but what is the proportion of that influence? What billion other factors contribute? My guess is that you'll never be able to isolate just one factor that accounts for the bulk of the influence.

This is not to say that social science experiments can't be done right, but it's not easy. This kind of reductionist tripe only serves to muddy the really good research out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men. That could be reversing the results.

Women don't prefer less attractive men, all else being equal.

<comment><AUTHOR> _There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men._

Why?

<comment><USER9> Instead of getting into a numbers match between all the influencing factors, I'd rather just point out that there are many confounding factors and that the authors of this seemed to miss that point entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "with the perfect 10 representing the ultimate babe."

Sounds real credible.

</comment><comment><USER11> Women can fall in love with guys that aren't hot. Guys don't fall in love with women who aren't hot to them. Love, yes; in love, no.</comment>


Syzygryd Salon at GAFFTA in San Francisco Tonight - <AUTHOR> http://www.syzygryd.com/2010/syzygryd-salon-at-gaffta-on-fri-may-14th/

<comment><AUTHOR> Come play with some of the technology I've been working on for my Burning Man project this year. We'll have some giant touch screens to play with, as well as many of the artists and engineers who are working on the project.</comment>


Why Did I Invest in the Company Pose? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/01/18/why-did-i-invest-in-pose/

<comment><USER2> Dustin Rosen contacted me last year to develop an app for him. He seemed enthusiastic and had a ton of ideas. While I didn't end up building an app, (probably because of location differences) I assumed whatever he did was going to be a hit.

Good Luck to the Pose Team!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice piece about what looks to be a promising new photo sharing app with a real business model</comment>


Orbital Space Debris Caught for the First Time - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbwv88/watch-this-net-capture-orbital-space-debris-for-the-first-time-in-history <comment><USER2> Title is a bit misleading. The company sent up the cubesat "debris" along with their net for testing purposes. I guess that does make it space debris. If their net had failed, it would have been yet another piece of junk orbiting - but the the net effect was zero cleanup. It was a successful test.

</comment><comment><USER3> No.

>>> The mission involves deploying these cubesats as artificial space junk and them capturing them to demonstrate the effectiveness debris removal technology.

It picked up trash that it released. It did not intercept trash. It grabbed a conveniently placed and engineered object with virtually identical orbital parameters.

<comment><USER4> How is this different than capturing real trash, minus some extra Δv to match orbits?

<comment><USER3> (1) Finding the trash, targeting it with sensors. (2) Irregular shape/rotation of trash. (3) Trash with sharp edges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're intersted in the orbital debris problem, I reccomend Nasa's site: [https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov](https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov)

</comment><comment><USER6> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18031714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18031714).

</comment><comment><USER4> Anime is real: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes)

</comment><comment><USER7> We're a messy species: oceans, atmosphere and space. But we do have a conscience, and we are creative, so maybe there's hope.

<comment><USER4> This has little to do with anyone's conscience, and more to do with our fear of Kessler syndrome.

<comment><USER7> You're right, sadly: I guess I was anthropomorphizing us ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Newspapers Begin to Use Zillow - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/newspapers-begin-to-use-zillow/ <comment><USER2> I consider the beta of Zillow prices to be about 2-4x that the actual market. When the market was good in 2007, home appraisers priced my house at $160k up from $145k two years ago. Zillow said my house was $185k. Now a home appraiser valued my house at $150k and Zillow says it is $110k.

While it may give the newspapers some cash infusion, overall for the end-user, Zillow prices are just plain horrible.</comment>


Cycles and modularity in the wild  - <AUTHOR> http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/cycles-and-modularity-in-the-wild/ <comment><USER2> Some facts to support the anecdote of F# code conciseness and expressiveness.</comment>


My history with Forth & stack machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machines.html? <comment><USER2> See prior conversation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2985601></comment>


Ask HN: How do I start making music? - <AUTHOR> Like anyone else, music has always been an important part of my life. Occasionally I'll even come up with a tune or beat in my head and think, "Wow, that actually sounds cool."
But I have zero knowledge of how to transfer this idea into real music. I'm mostly interested in electronic, ambient, and related genres (and not playing the oboe.)
Tips? Thoughts? Where to start? What was your experience? <comment><USER2> As someone who started producing just that, electronic music and mainly ambient and techno without any musical knowledge or formal training except for a little bit of playing the drums as a kid I'd say just jump into it and see if you like doing it.

Try a few DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Ableton Live (my DAW of choice) or FL Studio and start following tutorials on youtube to get the basics down, how to use the DAW, how to play around with samples, loops and premade sounds to get a feel for actually making something to sound like a song, beat or anything really.

Expect and accept that everything you'll create the first few months or even the first year will sound like shit and that's just the nature of learning and improving.

Do not buy a bunch of hardware or midi controllers right of the bat. Stick to learning the DAW and working "in the box" until you feel that you're ready to take the next step. Personally I've gone from working in the box, to using hardware only and now I'm back to a much more streamlined studio with basically no hardware at all.

Like I said, just jump into it and see if you like it and if you do you're mostly likely going to stick to it for the long haul.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the long comment. I'll probably end up with Logic as I'm using a Mac.</comment></comment>


Ethereum, Bitcoin's most ambitious successor - <AUTHOR> http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/7/code-your-own-utopiameetethereumbitcoinasmostambitioussuccessor.html <comment><USER2> The idea of turing complete crytocontracts is super exciting, but I understand why Satoshi didn't add a turing complete language in Bitcoin.

Turing complete contracts add a whole new level of complexity (e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem)). I guess many (most?) could be solved by limiting computation time - it it's still a scary world. If one just considers how many significant issues the much more basic Bitcoin protocol has managed to hide (e.g. transaction malleability). If implementing a "basic" protocol is that hard - the idea of a turing complete protocol is formidable!

<comment> a-priori In Ethereum, you need to fund a contract in order for it to perform computations, and the amount that gets charged to a contract depends on the amount of work it does. So if someone were to write an infinite loop, for example, eventually the contract would run out of money and die.

The halting problem is not a practical issue with Ethereum, because the system doesn't care, in advance, whether or not a contract will halt. It will just run it to find out.

<comment><USER3> How does this work as the network scales? If I understand it correctly, every node needs to execute every contract. This means that for some large enough number of nodes, it must either cost more for the network to perform the computation than any constant cost of execution, or the cost of contracts must vary by the size of the network executing them. Could someone more knowledgeable about the project explain more?

<comment><USER4> They propose fixed mandatory fees. [https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White- Pa...](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper#fees)

Nodes can't be compensated for this— only the single miner who chose to burden the chain with the contract. Everyone else has to go along for the ride (or skip verifying it and hope that the anonymous miner wasn't lying). This is one of the reasons Bitcoin has very purposefully eschewed contracts which are computationally expensive to execute.

You can almost always perform a computationally expensive contract externally to the system and bind it with a hashlock or multisig, in any case. The inability of the a consensus system to perform IO to outside world usually demands those techniques in any case.

<comment><USER5> It would be really cool if they could figure out a way to adapt the fees of various operations to match their costs. Fixed fees will almost certainly not do this.

Imagine someone develops a chip that can calculate ECDSA operations 10 times faster, consuming 100 times less electricity. In a well-functioning market, the consequence of this would be that the price of ECDSA operations would drop, to reflect the fact that they now cost less to verify. With fixed fees, this isn't possible, and there is no financial incentive to optimize any given operation, without optimizing all operations simultaneously.

<comment><USER6> In the latest paper, they have a fixed price in "gas" per operation, but the market determines price per unit of gas.

[http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf](http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Right, it's relative price fixing, which is what my post described a problem with.

<comment><USER6> Ah, gotcha. I guess in principle you could use a similar market approach for each type of resource. That might work out better long-term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The project's team, _which is almost entirely male_ , includes experts in finance, "

I don't understand how is that relevant. Why is press so sexiest these days? Are they trying to toehold to anything even remotely political to get the views?

<comment><USER8> I understand that it probably isn't relevant, but I don't think it is sexist. It doesn't say that an almost entirely male team is good nor bad for the project.

For me is like they have said, a team mostly based on <random city>

<comment><USER9> If the team were all female, it would be the headline.

<comment><USER10> In that light, it might be better if we always mention when a team is all- male, if just for parity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > arrangements are being made to incorporate a nonprofit for Ethereum in the > legal free-for-all of Switzerland

Swiss Law might be a bit idiosyncratic but I would hardly call it a "legal free-for-all".

<comment><USER12> Ethereum founder here.

The general four categories of options that we had are:

(i) a traditional banking/tax haven (Isle of Man, Panama, etc)

(ii) Switzerland

(iii) Iceland

(iv) Singapore / some other "Asian tiger"

The reason we discarded (i), aside from reputational concerns, is that such jurisdictions tend to be unstable; they are nice to you right up until the US government wants them to stop being nice to you, at which point they flop over in ten seconds. (iii), while nice for other crypto-startups, is bad here because there is unfortunately a hostile legal environment for cryptocurrency. The choice between (ii) and (iv) is arbitrary; both categories of jurisdictions have a good legal environment for these kinds of projects, and both have a reputation for being reliable and consistent. We chose Switzerland because (1) the government is more accessible, so there is no need to wait six months to talk to regulators, (2) we are working with OpenTransactions, who had an established understanding of the local legal environment and have been able to provide massive help to us, and (3) because it's linguistically and culturally easier for us to deal with Swiss regulators than Chinese regulators.

So it's not at all a free-for-all; it's a solid legal environment with an established reputation for stability that meets our objectives. If we wanted/needed a true free-for-all, we would be working with Panama.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for commenting. I don't think there is a misunderstanding, but just to clarify, I was taking issue with the article author's description of Switzerland -- not your choice of where to set up shop.

I can see why Switzerland is a smart choice, for reasons such as those you give.

<comment><USER12> I understand. I was simply clarifying for everyone's benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wait, doesn't Bitcoin already have a scripting language baked in?

And it is disabled on most clients to avoid trolling and DoS attacks.

EDIT: It is addressed on the white paper: [https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White- Pa...](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper)

<comment><USER4> > And it is disabled on most clients

This is not correct. It's a part of the consensus system rules and cannot be just enabled and disabled on a node by node basis. It must be preformed precisely and identically on all systems.

What is the case is that nodes don't relay transactions with unusual scripts to prevent DOS attacks, but once they're in a block they're fine.

<comment><USER13> This is what I meant, but I didn't knew the particulars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >"Anything that is completely computer-operated is a potentially oppressive system."

Anything that is completely people-operated is a certainly oppressive system.

<comment><USER12> Copying from a post I made on Reddit:

Lately I have become much more comfortable with the idea of computer- controlled systems for one simple reason: our world is already computer controlled. The computer in question is the universe with its laws of physics and humans provide the inputs to this great multisig by manipulating their body parts. At the "base layer", no semblance of compassion really exists: the person who wins is the one who can wield the most violence. This is true even in anarchies; when it comes down to it, it's the guy with the guns who has the final say. And yet humans have managed to take this base layer and build all sorts of other structures on top. The world of programmatic smart contracts is exactly the same; it's just a set of cryptographic "laws of physics" that you can build stuff on, except it's designed to be both much more efficient and at the same time voluntarist at the core - unlike in the "real world", it's much harder to successfully steal a private key than it is to create and use one.

<comment><USER15> Very well said. In addition, due to our evolutionary origins, humans tend to be inherently far more prone to malevolent behavior. Human history demonstrates the severity of this tendency quite dramatically.

A an impartial system of rules may not be understanding of specific emotional contexts, but it is by definition fair. This is because it will always behave in the same manner given the same inputs.

Given the judicial reality of most present (and past) societies, I would trust my fate to a carefully designed legal algorithm over a human jury every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Ethereum team just released a more technical paper:

[http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf](http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> The use of the word "successor" in the article title implies that Bitcoin is dead. It's a shame how many people (and news outlets) equate the failure of MtGox with the failure of bitcoin.

<comment><USER17> I dont think the subjugation of bitcoin to the past-tense is exclusively due to Mt Gox; the recent IRS ruling in the US of bitcoin as property also downgraded bitcoin's status significantly, at least in the US

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any idea on when investment and mining in Ethereum will begin?

</comment><comment><USER19> Related video of a presentation of Ethereum at one of the recent HN Kansai:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzz...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzzplJ3sS0)</comment>


who's leaving a PhD program for a startup? how did you come to your decision? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'm not leaving one but I'm turning down an acceptance. I never really cared about the PhD credential; grad school is mostly an excuse to spend a few years working on cool stuff on someone else's dime. But if I work for or start a comparably interesting startup, then I still get that, plus I have a chance to come away rich rather than in debt.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got accepted into a Phd program. I'm putting of the decision for as long as possible. Has anyone here managed to do their startup and their Phd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, by no means should anyone listen to me, but if your PhD environment (e.g. Stanford or in a top tech program), personally I would at least attend a semester -- at the very least make some connections.

And if you're like me and being paid to go to graduate school it's more tempting to stick around (especially if other people's research depends on you or you have a general feeling that you're letting down people, e.g. profs that you got you where you are now). There were times I wavered because of this but at some point I told/convinced myself that 10 years from now these people will understand.

People not in the situation tend to be very gung-ho and tell you things like ... do what your heart feels! seize the day! blah blah blah. I've heard it all.

Yea, if only they were in your shoes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A wise guy will go for things that sounds right to him. If your interests are at building a startup and getting a feel or experience, then pursuing it is a good decision.</comment>


Sortfolio auction ends with no bidders - <AUTHOR> https://flippa.com/2739829-sortfolio-com-web-design-marketplace-w-220k-annual-revenue?nodupe2 <comment><USER2> The listing had no information with which to value the site. Nothing about the traffic sources. Nothing about the handover process. Nothing about billing the customers. 37Signals did not answer a single question posted to the auction.

It's no surprise nobody bid. Actually, someone did bid but nobody at 37Signals approved it, so the bid expired. You have to wonder why they spent money listing it at all; and, since the auction was essentially abandoned, whether they would've honored a sale if someone had offered the asking price.

<comment><USER3> maybe the site got so much traffic due to all this media attention now, that they decided to actually keep it.

<comment><USER4> They said they'd be shutting it down if they didn't sell it. Did they say now they're keeping it? That would look even worse for their credibility, honesty, integrity, etc..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The way they approached this sale feels amateurish for such a successful company

<comment><USER6> Perhaps there was an ulterior motive, like publicity. After all, they're 37signals and they can do whatever they please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those of us who have no idea what this is all about or why it's important: [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/10/37signals-lists- web...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/10/37signals-lists-web-designer- directory-sortfolio-on-flippa-buy-it-now-for-480000/)

The sale price ($480k) is just greater than twice 1 year of income ($212k). Why does this seem low enough to be a red flag?

<comment><USER8> The problem is that the site will lose affiliation with 37signals (which probably drives a lot of their traffic) and existing customers will have to renew their membership. It's safe to say that when buying it revenue will be significantly lower than what it's doing right now.

<comment><USER7> So the vast majority of this site's value is actually its relationship with 37signals? And 37signals wants to sell the site and dissolve that relationship?

o_O

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It has good revenue, but it relies upon 37 signals to promote it. Without their support, revenues could tank. Its a big risk for many potential buyers.

<comment><USER10> Also you need to reengage every customer to change the payment method. Giving everyone a good opportunity to end their subscription or at least reevaluate whether they have gained from the subscription.

<comment><USER11> I doubt this would be required.

37signals uses Braintree and probably stores credit card numbers themselves. Besides, I'm sure for a transfer like this Braintree would transfer these existing accounts to a new Braintree account.

<comment><USER12> It's at least unclear. 37s indicated previously that the buyer would need to build a new billing system and my impression was that customers would need to re-enroll in a new billing relationship. 37s has not clarified one way or the other.

<comment><USER13> I emailed Jason, and he said Braintree would transfer all the data over.

<comment><USER14> I wonder why he didn't just say as much in either the blog post or the Flippa auction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What they ought to do instead of selling it, is pick an entrepreneur from their community and give him/her a go at running Sortfolio for a year or two with some kind of incentive based equity sharing deal.

<comment><USER16> I don't have any special knowledge about Sortfolio or 37Signals, but it seems like Sortfolio is really inconvenient to divest.

It's big enough that shooting it in the head seems wasteful (and potentially disappointing to existing customers). It's small enough that the opportunity cost of dealing with a sale quickly exceed the proceeds, and that sell-side advisors aren't going to be clamoring for the opportunity to help. And on top of that it's an unusual business, so traditional small business brokers don't know what to do with it.

The demand side has similar size issues, where it's big enough to be a large purchase for a random individual, small enough that it's unlikely to attract attention from strategic buyers with an eye out for acquisition targets, and unusual enough that a purely financial acquisition is unlikely.

I feel like you're on the right track, but again it goes back to value. The expected value from finding somebody to take over sortfolio, spin it into a separate entity, and then get 37s out of their ownership position probably isn't that much higher than the value they'd get from spending the time working on and marketing their key products and simply shooting sortfolio in the head at some pre-determined date.

<comment><USER15> It would also be a good way to invest in the Rework philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wait for the "where we did wrong" blog post.

</comment><comment><USER18> What really surprises me is that the same people who did the revolutionary Rails years ago came up with rather mediocre products afterwards.

I don't know anybody who is using Basecamp nowadays (and that's their best known product), the same with obscure Highrise and Backpack. Campfire is the only one which is quite popular and well used. But Campfire is just a chat server, really no rocket science and could be substituted by tons of similar services (but I still like it because of the hooks).

<comment><USER19> I too thought the old basecamp was terrible but the new one is quite nice.

<comment><USER20> I used it back in the day and liked it. Other than being used to Basecamp, I don't really see why anybody would choose it over Asana in 2012 though. Given the choice between a free Basecamp and Asana it would still be an easy decision.

<comment><USER21> I get more done in new Basecamp than in Asana. Basecamp is better designed and better engineered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think that everyone who is assuming that 37 Signals is being neglectful or unprofessional here, may be missing the possibility that they let the auction fail with intent.

It is possible that private negotiations have been in process.

I'm ignorant to the rules of posting an auction on sortfolio, and to the fees, but I'd bet that there would be plenty of reasons for a buyer to prefer a different process, and once said buyer approached 37 Signals with a serious offer, they may have changed their mind about it "not being worth their time" [1].

Or, someone they respect and trust could have shown interest and taken initiative to run the site.

[1] I read an unsourced claim in another thread that 37 Signals felt that Sortfolio was not worth their time.

<comment><USER23> How is putting it on an auction site and then ignoring it because you got a private offer _not_ neglectful or unprofessional? That's exactly what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's not clear if this was a legit auction. I had some interest and contacted Jason from 37signals and he indicated that he was still looking for $480K, no less.

</comment><comment><USER25> It would be a good buy if they give the potential buyer a time window of 18 months to work out an alternative customer acquisition channel.

Immediate separation will hurt it significantly and sortfolio will not be able to recover when the only growth driver is killed off.

In fact, Why not hire a typical founding team to find a second growth driver under the 37signals brand and then try to sell it? 212k annually should be enough for such a team.

</comment><comment><USER26> I briefly had a paid sortfolio account right around the time it first launched. I got one good lead which more than paid for my investment, but every other person who contacted me from that point on was an overseas developer trying to sell _me_ their services. I cancelled the account a month later. I see the biggest challenge with this site being coming up with a strategy to reduce spam.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting to see if he closes Sortfolio down, as quoted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3941504>

</comment><comment><USER28> No surprise here. Sortfolio's value comes from its association with 37 Signals. Without it, I'd be surprise if more than 10% of the clients renew their annual listing.

</comment><comment><USER29> What are the alternatives to Sortfolio now that it's dying any day?

<comment><USER30> Dribbble, Behance Network, Coroflot, Fiftytwo, Cargo Collective, Zerply, the list goes on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This was expected...</comment>


Full disclosure lockpicking - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/people/magazine/17-06/ff_keymaster

<comment><USER2> Awful headline, fantastic article! You can just see it in his eyes-- he's a hacker at heart.</comment>